OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER
VERY NOTABLE INCIDENTS
The instant the housekeeper saw Sancho Panza shut himself in with her
master, she guessed what they were about; and suspecting that the result
of the consultation would be a resolve to undertake a third sally, she
seized her mantle, and in deep anxiety and distress, ran to find the
bachelor Samson Carrasco, as she thought that, being a well-spoken man,
and a new friend of her master's, he might be able to persuade him to
give up any such crazy notion. She found him pacing the patio of his
house, and, perspiring and flurried, she fell at his feet the moment she
saw him.
Carrasco, seeing how distressed and overcome she was, said to her, "What
is this, mistress housekeeper? What has happened to you? One would think
you heart-broken."
"Nothing, Senor Samson," said she, "only that my master is breaking out,
plainly breaking out."
"Whereabouts is he breaking out, senora?" asked Samson; "has any part of
his body burst?"
"He is only breaking out at the door of his madness," she replied; "I
mean, dear senor bachelor, that he is going to break out again (and this
will be the third time) to hunt all over the world for what he calls
ventures, though I can't make out why he gives them that name. The first
time he was brought back to us slung across the back of an ass, and
belaboured all over; and the second time he came in an ox-cart, shut up
in a cage, in which he persuaded himself he was enchanted, and the poor
creature was in such a state that the mother that bore him would not have
known him; lean, yellow, with his eyes sunk deep in the cells of his
skull; so that to bring him round again, ever so little, cost me more
than six hundred eggs, as God knows, and all the world, and my hens too,
that won't let me tell a lie."
"That I can well believe," replied the bachelor, "for they are so good
and so fat, and so well-bred, that they would not say one thing for
another, though they were to burst for it. In short then, mistress
housekeeper, that is all, and there is nothing the matter, except what it
is feared Don Quixote may do?"
"No, senor," said she.
"Well then," returned the bachelor, "don't be uneasy, but go home in
peace; get me ready something hot for breakfast, and while you are on the
way say the prayer of Santa Apollonia, that is if you know it; for I will
come presently and you will see miracles."